Edenhofer ranked as Germany's top climate economist

09/13/2017 Amongst Germany's most important economists Ottmar Edenhofer once again scored excellently in a ranking done by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of the country's most influential newspapers. He turned out to be the only researcher investigating climate and environmental issues in the group of top economists. For the third time in a row he improved, moving up to the 11th rank this year.

Ottmar Edenhofer, the only researcher investigating climate and environmental issues who made it into the top group of German economists. Photo: Photothek

For the ranking of the 100 most influential economists in Germany, the newspaper every year assesses the performance of economists in three areas: media, politics and research. In the media and research categories, rankings are determined by the number of citations in media and scientific publications, respectively. Political influence is assessed by means of a survey policy-makers.

Edenhofer - chief economist and Vice Director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and a Professor at Technische Universität Berlin - did particularly well in the research category. He has been cited in scientific publications over 2000 times in the last five years. Among the economists who are better than Edenhofer in the overall ranking, only two have more citations. In terms of research, Edenhofer thus overtakes economists that are much more prominent in the media, such as Marcel Fratzscher (DIW) and Peter Bofinger (University of Würzburg). The leader of this year’s overall ranking is Clemens Fuest, who replaced Hans-Werner Sinn as president of the Ifo Institute last year.